While Jerry Brown has signed the budget bill that imposed an Internet Sales Tax on California, an arguably unconstitutional attempt to tax out-of-state businesses conducting interstate commerce with Californians, the fight’s not over. I’ve said again and again that Amazon doesn’t play around. And sure enough, the very night Brown signed the bill, Amazon emailed me and every other Amazon Associate in California to terminate our contracts.
Amazon’s not stopping there though. This company is admirable in its insistence that it will do the right thing and stand up for the shareholders. That trend continues as now Amazon has filed for a referendum on ABx1 28, the Amazon Tax portion of the budget. Referendum is of course one of the three classic Progressive acts of Democracy that the far left celebrates, held up along side Initiative and Recall, the latter of which we’re currently seeing used with gusto in Wisconsin.
But as it turns out, the big question surrounding the Amazon Tax referendum is: Will the progressive left hypocritically fight to prevent it from happening at all?
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Don’t our elected officials have access to Ballotpedia? If the California Democrats did, they’d know that the Amazon Tax being taken up this afternoon in the legislature is unconstitutional under the state Constitution. And it’s not some old, obscure provision that’s violated either. It’s the brand-new Proposition 26, a constitutional amendment passed in November, that the tax violates.
Put simply, Proposition 26 doesn’t let the state raise new revenue without a 2/3 requirement, so the Amazon tax cannot be passed with a simple majority. And no, Proposition 25, another constitutional amendment also passed in November, doesn’t change that fact.
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